At sunset, Dirk grew fussy. “He should be home,” Lizzie said finally. “Grandma Annie’s gonna get worried, her. Dr. Aranow, drive us home, please.”
Jackson could see that the others were impressed by Lizzie’s ordering him around. He had become a campaign asset. Plus public transportation—without his aircar they would have faced a long cold walk over the mountains. No… without his aircar, they wouldn’t have stayed so late, or argued so hard. Vicki grinned at him.
“I’m so excited,” Lizzie said in the car. “Just a few more hours! Dirk, hush, sweet baby. Hush, dear heart. A few more hours and four thousand four hundred eleven—at least!—Willoughby County Livers’ll register all at once!”
Shockey said, “You’re sure, you, that all them bumpkins know the on-line procedure, them?”
“Sam Bartlett and Tasha Herbert told all the tribes twice. Everybody knows what to do. It will work.”
And, to Jackson’s faint surprise, it did. At 11:00 P.M., everyone except small sleeping children gathered around Lizzie’s terminal. She’d programmed a running tally sheet: WILLOUGHBY COUNTY VOTERS, divided into two columns: LIVERS and DONKEYS. The number under DONKEYS, in glowing three-dimensional Univers Gothic, remained constant. Every time the other tally added another hundred voters, an American flag flashed, music played, and a tiny figure pressed a ballot button on a tiny voting net. The entire display sent out holo streamers ending in simulated fireworks.
Behind Jackson’s left shoulder, Vicki said, “Sort of a blend of New Year’s Eve, Scooter All-Stars, and Tammany Hall.”
“Get ready, everybody!” Shockey said. “It’s 11:48!”
Jackson watched the screen. Suddenly the LIVER number jumped, then jumped again, passing the DONKEY number. Flags flashed. People cheered, almost drowning out “Sometimes a Great Nation.” Annie Francy said, “Oh, my dear Lord.” The numbers jumped again, then again, and then came so fast that they looked animated, while projected holo fireworks exploded and all around him Livers screamed and hugged each other and jumped up and down.
Midnight, LIVERS: 4,450. DONKEYS: 4,082.
“We did it, us!” Shockey yelled.
“Hooray for the next district supervisor of Willoughby County!”
“Shock-ey! Shock-ey!”
Shockey was lifted up by his feet and walked around the floor on his hands—some Liver triumphant ritual, Jackson assumed. All at once, he felt very tired. His mobile rang.
“Jackson, answer me. Now.”
Cazie. How had she heard about this so damn fast? It was only 12:06. Did she just happen to be monitoring obscure voter registrations, or did she have a flag program to alert her to unusual political ripples? Suddenly Jackson wanted to talk to her. He was going to enjoy this. He moved to a relatively quiet corner and stood facing the wall, holding the small screen so Cazie couldn’t see the room.
“Cazie. What are you doing up so early?”
“Where are you, Jackson?”
“With friends. Why?”
“Willoughby County, Pennsylvania, has just registered an additional four thousand four hundred fifty voters minutes before the registration deadline. They’re Livers. Plus, a petition was filed to run a third candidate for Ellie Lester’s vacant position as district supervisor.”
Jackson said, “You mean Harold Winthrop Wayland’s position?”
“He was senile; his granddaughter ran the office. To, I might add, TenTech’s considerable advantage. District supervisor, as you know, does more than stock warehouses, behind the scenes the office controls—no, you probably don’t know. But, Jackson, this is serious. Certain people anticipated something like this, that’s why I found out about it immediately. It can’t be allowed to become a trend. Livers in office. Jesus Fucking Christ.”
“The voter registration was legal, wasn’t it?”
Cazie ran her hand through her dark curls. “That’s the problem. It is legal. It’s too late to register more donkeys—and we can’t jig the program directly, the media will be all over this one. Just because it’s a story. I’ve called Sue Livingston and Don Serrano and their campaign programmers, and I think you should be at our meeting, too. If only because TenTech is potentially affected. Do you know how deeply we’re invested in county and state bonds, just to give one aspect of the situation?”
“No,” Jackson said slowly, “I don’t.”
“Well, I’ll brief you. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bring you in on the political side of the company at all, but this time—Jackson, you’ve just never realized how important the political side is. TenTech is political connections!”
“I thought TenTech was a corporation for manufacturing necessary goods.”
Cazie sighed. “You would. Anyway, the meeting is at nine in the morning. My place.”
Jackson said nothing. Behind him, the celebratory roar had muted to a happy babble. He felt someone’s eyes on him, turned, and saw Vicki three feet away, unabashedly listening.
“Jack?” Cazie’s image said on the mobile’s small screen.
Vicki said softly, “If you don’t tell her you helped us, she’ll probably never know.”
“Jack? Are you still there?”
Vicki said, “You can just go to work again for the other side, protecting TenTech’s political tentacles. And losing… what? Do you think you’d be losing anything, Jackson?”
“Jack!”
Jackson lifted the mobile. He angled the lens so that Cazie could see the tribe building, then Vicki, then himself. “I’m here, Cazie, at Willoughby. And, yes, tomorrow morning I’ll be at that meeting, to disentangle TenTech interests from voter results. But not to undo the voter results.”
Cazie gasped. Jackson broke the link before she could speak and instructed the mobile to disregard all calls for the next six hours. He turned to Vicki. “But I want you to know that if I’m not a vote-tamperer, neither am I a political reformer. I’m a doctor.”
She said, “The situation doesn’t require a doctor.”
“And do you always just become whatever the situation requires? No personal choice?”
“That’s right. I’m just a bunch of brain chemicals responding to stimuli.”
He said, “You don’t believe that.”
“No. I don’t. But do you?” she said, and walked away.
Having had, he noticed, the last word.
The Livers sat in rows now on scarred chairs, interrupting as Lizzie and Shockey and Billy Washington planned aloud. Jackson scanned the slouching bodies—misproportioned, ungraceful, uneducated, contentious, rude. Dressed—barely—in tasteless garish free-issue plastic and homespun rags. Shouting stupid suggestions at each other motivated by greed, or unrealistic expectations, or orneriness, or a complete ignorance of governmental structure.
He left the political meeting and went home.
II
March–April 2121
Affiliation requires boundaries; a “we” must be defined on some basis if there are to be any obligations to the “we”; and once there is a “we,” there will be a “they.”
Ten
Jennifer sat at her desk in Sanctuary, drawing with a black calligraphy pen. It was amazing how relaxing she found this trivial art, using not a drawing program but actual ink, on paper. She allowed herself twenty minutes twice a day to draw whatever she chose, whatever came into her mind. A means of focusing your attention? Sanctuary’s communications chief Caroline Renleigh had said, which merely showed how little Caroline understood her. Jennifer’s attention did not need focusing. The drawing was a refreshing break in relentless attention.